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Originally Posted by williamhessian  i strongly beleive that our evolution (strongly aided by our intelligence) is following a very logical course at a technological scale. as technology and our knowledge as a race grow, it is only logical for us to live for a longer period of time, and our intelligence is at a climax point in which we can break new barriers. Living for hundreds of years is just around the corner and its simply evolution.
The scary thing is the fact that with this intelligence and evolution we also have the ability to create dangers to the people and the world around us with poisons (in food), pollution, unbalance in power and then zombie-like control over the common people.
With all of our amazing advances....comes amazing dangers.
I for one want to be a part of the solution, and I'd like to be part of the solution forever. |
Well if the told a guy in the middle ages that in 500 years we would have the technology to destroy the world many times over (atomic bombs) he would think we were insane to produce such a technology. But we can't deny it's positives, and we wouldn't go back prior to the discovery of atoms even if we could.
So my point is that the technological benefits always exceed the technological drawbacks such as the possibility of destroying all human race. We already have the technology to destroy it all but we didn't do it, so i don't think that further technological advances with further dangers will destroy us.
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Originally Posted by JimOfferman In theory at least, it ought to be possible to instruct the body to never age (= slow the rate of cell renewal) and thus live forever...
...or at least until you get hit by a truck, or some other unfortunate mishap. 
Jim. |
Unfortunately, if we slow our cell renewal i'm afraid we would rot and die. Cell renewal is of major importance. What we have to do is avoid the damages that come every time we make these renewals all over our body.
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Originally Posted by JimOfferman As far as I know, some of the more serious research being done on prolonged lifespans is focussed on identifying and switching off the "aging genes" in our DNA. |
Actually, there are much more researches being done on avoiding the damages that happen throughout our lives than the ones being done to find this "aging gene", which is far from being proven to exist.
One of the biggest aging researchest is this one:
Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS): A practical way to cure human aging - Website of Dr. Aubrey de Grey
There they trying to find ways to repair the damages that we suffer throughout our lives. Theoretically, if they manage to find out how to do it. they will be able to stop and even reverse aging, to the point that one looks like a 20 y. o.
But besides all the arguments, no one really knows (yet
) what makes us age, if it's an "aging gene" causing the damages (unlikely), or just the imperfection of our DNA causing these damages (more likely). So we won't reach an agreement because the answer isn't out there yet.